Divine Duo
by Nameless-Anonymous-Author
Summary: They were deeper than friendship and deeper than love. They were simply TentenandNeji. He would need her, she would love him, and in the end one would leave. Slight AU. Oneshot. Character Death.


**Disclaimer: Standard**

Special thanks to my wonderful betas: **Srylanna**, **Casinia**, **mydemonsangel**, and** Raiden4019**

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_**あなたは...を知っていますか？**_

_**(You... Do you know?)**_

_**私があなたを愛していること**_

_**(That I love you)**_

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_I love you_, she says in the silence of the night.

_I do not love you_, he responds, swift, and blunt and brutal.

_I know_, Tenten smiles, small and sad.

_But someday I will_, Neji swears solemnly, conviction strengthening his voice.

_Someday I will be gone_.

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_**あなたは私の薬〔ドラッグ〕です**_

_**(You are my drug)**_

_**私の汚い小さい秘密**_

_**(My dirty little secret)**_

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His touches are like butterfly wings, fluttering over her skin with unbelievable gentleness, leaving a path of burning skin behind. His mouth is hot ash that ignites a flame inside her that smoulders inside the pit of her stomach. His hair is a river of brown silk in which she drowns her fingers. She is addicted, never able to have enough of him. He is her drug and her high.

She breathes him in and this world is gone.

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_**あなたは同じですか？**_

_**(Are you the same?)**_

_**私の愛...同じ...あなたの愛?**_

_**(Your love...same...my love?)**_

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Comrades? Yes, certainly the others of their generation understood that. Of the entire Konoha 12, they worked the best together with flawless partnership.

Friends? That was believable as well; they were rarely seen without the other and only Tenten was able to tease Neji without suffering dire consequences.

Lovers? Never, was the unanimous consensus. They barely ever made physical contact outside of sparring, much less holding hands or kissing as traditional couples did.

They were just _together _in the barest of senses, close, but not too close, perpetually as one. This was them; this bond deeper than friendship, deeper than family, deeper than love.

They were simply _TentenandNeji_.

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**_一緒に永遠に_**

**_(Together eternally)_**

**_私たちは決して止まりません_**

**_(We never stop)_**

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They are called the Divine Duo.

He is her push, her drive to fly higher, higher, higher, to touch the sky and dance with the weapons she so dearly loves. She provides the unstoppable offense.

She is his support, his pillar, the reason he is_ harderfasterstronger _than all the others and his skills are without compare. He is the impenetrable defense.

"Tenten," she startles awake at the sound of his voice, twenty kunai flying between her fingers as her body twists into an instinctive defensive crouch. She presses the steel close to the intruder's throat before confirming _his_ identity.

"I thought training was at six, it's only three…," Tenten replies softly, running a hand through her loose, flowing hair.

"Tenten," he repeats and because they have been so long together, she instantly picks up on the strange note to the word, "We need to leave now."

_ Trust me._

She stares at him, a thousand words passing silently between them. If she left now, with no explanation, she could be cutting all ties with Konoha. She could be branded a missing-nin and never see Gai or Lee again whom she loved despite their eccentrics. There could be so many reasons they were fleeing and she wouldn't know until she made her choice.

There is no hesitation, "Let's go," she says, her hands having already tied her hair into buns and donning her ANBU suit while grabbing her massive scroll .

_I do._

She would follow him to the doors of Hell and beyond, if he asked her.

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_**あなたは私の太陽、私の空、私の星です,ムーン**_

_**(You are my sun, my sky, my stars, and my moon)**_

_**あなたは私の地球、私の海、私の天国、私の地獄です**_

_**(You are my earth, my ocean, my heaven, my hell)**_

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He needs her.

It is as simple as that but not at simple at all. It is a co-dependency that isn't healthy in any sense.

He needs her to stay with him, to defend him, to prove to him that she was not weak_. _

He needs her.

He has enclosed his heart with imepenatrable walls and trapped her within them because without her air, water, and food alone cannot sustain him.

So he beats her into the ground without an apology _(make her stronger and she will not leave) _and prays she understands.

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**_私たちは完璧な2つです_**

**_(We are the perfect two)_**

**_誰が私たちより良いですか？_**

**_(Who is better than us?)_**

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Konoha has made them monsters.

_(that kill and kill and kill and are broken in so many ways and they can only love one another because they have been together forever)_

They have committed the ultimate sin in a world where incest is celebrated and morals are rare.

There was no greater crime that stained their hands.

They killed an entire Academy class.

Academy students were in a sense "off-limits" unless a particular village felt particularly cruel or decided to evoke a war. Academy students were considered buds to be nurtured so that they could bloom into efficient killing machines. The most powerful shinobi, the only ones that would have the power, stealth, or experience to enter the heart of a village and kill its greatest prize, tended to have a certain mindset. They found it beneath them to fight opponents "that never really had a chance". It would be later in life that they found the pleasure in crushing them.

The Academy had four classes with four distinct levels with the youngest starting at age five and the oldest ending at age eight. The one they had annihilated was the second year class who had just begun to handle real kunai and learn about more basic jutsu.

It had occurred during an outing with twenty eight snot-faced six year olds and four chunin teachers. Their purpose had been to collect samples of a poisonous flower to use for demonstration purposes.

It had been bad luck from the start.

The jonin rouge-nins on the run weren't supposed to have decided to make their final stand but they did. Before deciding to end it all they had laid a plethora of traps, rendering travel with such an inexperienced group impossible.

The chunin teachers had reacted swiftly, sending back one of their own for help while the other three began to utilize Earth jutsu to hide as many children as possible. They would never know that the one they had sent back never made it past the third trap.

Their luck only worsened from there.

Too bad that the rouges were Iwa-nin and so Neji and Tenten knew to attune to Earth-style jutsu in particular.

Too bad that Neji and Tenten, in the heat of battle, didn't realize that the faint chakra pulses from these various underground Earth jutsus weren't a surprise jutsu or clone.

Too bad that it was only after the twenty-minute battle the duo realized they had 37 bodies on their hands rather than 6.

Too bad that they couldn't find it in their hearts to care.

(unforgivable they say)

_(they are monsters – what do they care of forgiveness?)_

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_**日あるいは夜...軽いかあるいは暗いです。**_

_**(Day or Night, Light or Dark)**_

_**私はあなたを愛します**_

_**(I will love you)**_

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The dress is torn in several spots, the ragged fabric revealing smooth tan skin, and one of the thin straps is falling off her thinner shoulder. Once a shimmering silver colour, it has been dyed a dark crimson. Her plum lipstick is smudged on her full lips, and there is blood splattered in dried dots on her shadow-gaunt face. Fresh bruises in the shape of a large hand blooms on right arm, ugly even before mottling. There is a laceration on her left leg that screams of a violent delivery.

The kunoichi sighs, her brown eyes revealing a bone-deep weariness. She can't seem to muster the energy to deal with the furious, white-eyed shinobi before her.

"It's part of the job Neji. You always knew that."

Then she walks away, with the burden of blood and death and with the stifling knowledge that the innocence she gave will never return.

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_**あなたは、私が必要としている全部です**_

_**(You are all I need)**_

_**しかしあなたへの私の価値〔値/価格〕は同じですか？**_

_**(But is my worth the same to you?)**_

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"Hiashi-sama has found me a fiancée," a tense pseudo calm supplements the words; the peace before the storm.

The reply is instantaneous. "What would you like me to say Neji? Good for you?" Angry words that are pure ice fall from hurt lips.

"I do not know," the admittance is resigned, not of that standard Hyuga pride, and Tenten finds she can no longer be livid. She deflates, reason and logic cooling the volcano that is her emotions.

"Do you love her Neji?" There is a push in her words, a need to know. It seems irrational, as arranged marriages are usually business deals, but in a world where people can run on water and form fire dragons nothing is impossible.

"Not more than you." Neji watches the woman before him, fascination filling his mind. The stars may gleam and twinkle above with a background of darkness but she is brighter and more captivating than they could ever be.

They remind him of a dying star – exploding and collapsing into oblivion, burning up while producing the most beautiful, exotic sight there is to see.

"But you do."But you do.

"I do not know Tenten," he says with a slight plead as he realizes might actually lose her. Life without Tenten is imaginable; he cannot remember a time when it was not TentenandNeji.

She stands up abruptly, her back facing him. For once, she is closed and hidden from his all-seeing eyes. "You don't need to."

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**_時刻私は行く_**

**_(Time I go)_**

**_これはさようならですか？_**

**_(Is this good-bye?)_**

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Once upon a time, there was a kunoichi and a shinobi put on the same team. They became comrades, friends, and then lovers as they rose from genin to chunin to jonin to eventually join the ranks of elite ANBU. Yet they never parted, until now.

_S-ranked_

_Little hope of survival_

_Maximum Priority_

_Do you accept?_

_Do you understand?_

...

_Hai Hokage-sama_

The girl says goodbye and the boy lets her go and there is no happily ever after.

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**_私の貴重な鳥を飛ばしてください_**

**_(Fly my precious bird)_**

**_これらのチェーンから_**

**_(From these chains)_**

**_._**

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**Goodbye Neji**

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_It's been ten years Neji. You have to let her go; it's time to move on. She would want you to._

_How dare you say what she would want? You don't know her! You don't know Tenten!_

Neji, I was just trying to-

_Well stop trying. I will never let her go. She was the only cage I chose. A cage I loved. A cage I needed. One that I will never leave even as its steel bars crumble around me, disintegrating to dust as time wears on. For that is my Fate - loving her, and only her, for eternity._

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**_私のばか愛_**

**_(My foolish love)_**

**_何と意志私ハエあなたは私の翼だったとき?_**

**_(How can I fly when you were my wings?)_**


End file.
